Winding Down Solaris Batch Service

SCCS currently runs a large batch cluster which includes both
Solaris (Sparc) and Linux (Intel and AMD) worker machines. The
Solaris systems, known as "broncos", are the oldest machines in
the cluster and are reaching the end of their useful life.
Although they have been quite reliable, they provide only a small
fraction of the cluster's total computing capacity and they
consume a disproportionate amount of power and cooling. We are
therefore considering either shutting down entirely, or sharply
reducing, our Solaris batch service sometime in the next couple
of months. We expect the lost capacity to be more than offset by
the next acquisition of new batch workers, which we plan to have
in service by the end of October.

We would like to hear from any users who feel that completely
shutting down this service would adversely impact their work.
Please keep in mind that SCCS is not planning to eliminate all
Solaris/Sparc resources. For example, we will continue to run
the flora pool of public login machines and the tersk pool of
interactive compute servers. For more information about the
various categories of public UNIX machines and their intended
uses, please see the
Public Machines
page.

Please send any comments about shutting down the Solaris batch
service to unix-admin@slac.stanford.edu.